It’s kind of exciting not really fitting into pigeon holes. They say I’m a Smizz of all trades, master of none. I’m currently designing and coding an app in my (limited) spare time, which I hope will help to aid patients in having a better patient-centered-care experience. The app hopes to include all the information for their treatment, and later on become interactive- enabling the patient to get the support they really need (financial, emotional, physical, ect) by using a series of questions over a period of time, and documenting how they’re coping/feeling/side-effects, ect. It’s exciting stuff. But learning coding for this is a steep learning curve.

As an intermediate dabbler in website designing and coding, and now embarking on objective-C and swift codes I am no stranger to being able to take a problem and see the inevitable solutions, but also I’m pretty skilled now in being able to hypotheize the potential for disaster – what problems could I run into using a certain code with another, or ethically, or in language, ect. We use this kind of thinking in Healthcare too. It’s figuring out what our best practice is by eliminating all the problems for optimal experience and outcomes. In art, we use these problems too, to breakdown into manageable truths. As a Marxist, I’ve naturally developed a somewhat cynical ability to breakdown systems really easily into oppressive segregations & loopholes & weaknesses.

But thinking like this naturally, or often, comes with its consequences. Your every day problems become disastrous in your mind. I catch myself getting caught up in this mind-set – Unanswered phone calls become bad-news, someone being late becomes a car accident, late arrivals due to delayed trains and buses become missed opportunities. Being poorly and not doing as much as I used to became career stagnation. The omnipresent of ‘but-what-ifs’ continue to grow.

However, now I try and use this unconscious worst-case-scenario as a way to panic myself into action. Rewards come from risk, and a life without risk is a life that’s probably pretty boring.

When I arrived in the land of the ill – i wasn’t sure i was going to survive. It was the worst I’ve ever felt in my life. I made a list of all the things I’d do if I ever recovered. If I got a second chance. I mean, yeah, i had led a pretty interesting life up to that moment, but I had made sacrifices in the present for a future which I had no idea I’d ever get, as we all do. As a patient, I often felt misunderstood. I was demeaned within the healthcare system 1 or 2 times. I felt ashamed for being poorly. (As well as being shown amazing compassion). I could see levels of the system that I knew I could instantly change if I was in the system (such as just simplying listening to the patient, making them feel heard). I also ferociously read everything i could on cancer, & healthcare and compassion. The experience made me want to be the change I so desperately wanted to see as a Patient. I thought, mane, this system needs some more creative/different thinkers! I have this habit of trying to game systems. So when I started to get back onto my feet a little bit, or learning to live with what was happening, I began to realize some of those things on my list. After talking to a lot of people, I realized the potential possibilities so I applied & started my healthcare adventure.

Being told that it looks like you have a malignancy forces you to realize that life can end literally any time. And this quickly changes what you deem worthy of your attention. I was furious at myself for not being as present with friends and family as I should have been. All the nights-out I missed at university, all the times I wasn’t empathetic to my housemate for his anxiety with post-graduation life. I was absolutely Furious! These were things I hadn’t even calculated in my head until I got ill.

The junction between mortality and mundanity is an exquisite source of perspective. I often sit on the bus, watch a sunset and I think about how these boundaries between are treacherous and illusory. It’s hard to gain this kind of perspective, and it’s equally hard not to lose it, not to start slipping back into old habits. Partially for that reason, I enrolled onto my radiation oncology course. I love art, and it makes me happy and fulfils my soul. But I do miss the way people think in art, and the discussions and dialogues when I’m working in healthcare. I miss the playfulness of the every day I had when I was a fulltime artist – but I believe there’s somewhere in between for both areas.

Art makes me the person who doesn’t trust everything I am taught in the healthcare system. Art is the reason why I can understand and empathize with a persons story, with the person and not just the disease that we’re treating. Healthcare makes me appreciate the edges of life, the possibilities, the beauty & tragedy in it. Designing something brings these 2 worlds together for me.

But coding has taught me about action. This is extremely important right now. We are standing in the middle of time, where great injustices go untouched. Architects of the financial melt down continue to swoon with the governments. & yet our laws and governments continue to value capitalism over humanity. Under-funding the NHS, profiting from education, trying to put laws into place to criminalize our movements when we try and mobilise against things that are wrong, cutting funding for those who are in great need of it, where we give up our freedoms, and allow ourselves to be spied on by the NSA, ect all under the guise of protection.

Change doesn’t roll in on inevitability, it comes with continuous struggle.

So, just as I promised my bleeding, puking, bruised former-self, I plan on raging against the bullshit, and make things that can help others, and keep the door open with kindess & listen. I will wander for a while: call this just 1 of many future sabbaticals. Life isn’t linear. Neither is coding, making, changing. In the end, I think my job over-all isn’t healthcare student, nor artist – but to remind myself every day that my time is limited. And so is yours.

As Aaron Swarts used to say, “What is the most important thing you could be working on right now? And if you’re not working on that, why aren’t you?”